Meet Franklin who is 5 years old. He is profoundly deaf and was identified at 1 year old. His parents, who are hearing, have chosen ASL as his modality. He is in kindergarten in a mainstream classroom.

4:03 PM

Franklin is just arriving home after a long 7 hour school day. He is hot and sweaty after his 45 minute bus commute from school to his house. He has homework to do – read a book and draw a picture of his favorite scene in the book. He can’t read yet, so he has to wait until his parents are able to read to him and help him with his homework.

Franklin is preparing for his homework activity by setting up on the kitchen table his paper, colored pencils, and the book he’s chosen. Mom works from home but doesn’t finish work until 5 PM. Dad won’t be home until much later, usually after 9 PM. Mom is a hearing parent whose ASL has improved greatly over the past several years, but she doesn’t feel confident in her ability communicating with Franklin.

Through a partnership between myON and Get Georgia Reading: Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, all educators, librarians, students, and parents in Georgia have free access to more than 5,000 enhanced digital books from now throughAugust 30th. These digital books, with flexible reading scaffolds, are the core content of myON’s award-winning personalized literacy environment with embedded tools and metrics to support and track student reading growth. During this free summer trial, all readers will share a single account that provides unlimited access to myON’s digital books, without the personalization elements.

To learn more about how to take full advantage of this resource, watch this video.

The classic Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried wolf is brought to life in a wholly new medium with vivid American Sign Language storytelling, adding cinematic elements to a timeless tale. Accompanied by detailed paintings that evoke times of yore, this storybook app for the iPad comes with over 140 vocabulary words, signed and fingerspelled. App design is based on proven research on bilingualism and visual learning from Visual Language and Visual Learning.

In The Boy Who Cried Wolf VL2 Storybook you will also find:

• Talented and professional ASL storytelling by Justin Jackerson

• Original artwork by renowned artist Pamela Witcher

• Easy and accessible navigation designed for children

• Retina supported images

• Over 140 vocabulary words in American Sign Language!

• Perfect tool for parents learning ASL along with their child! Read together!

• Audio voice-over provided for all vocabulary words.

• App features page by page videos, as well as a full ASL story with animations!

All revenues from this app will go towards research and the development of more bilingual & interactive storybook apps!

More about the 100 Babies Project, in the words of former Project Manager, Dr. Jessica Bergeron:

“Georgia Pathway started off as a community of practice for teachers, teachers who serve children who are deaf and hard of hearing. It started in June of 2011 in an effort to provide online support for teachers and improve their practices around literacy. We are the only group to combine LSL (Listening & Spoken Language), state-run ASL (American Sign Language)/bilingual programs, with county comprehensive programs with the common goal of grade level reading. We are the only group of our kind. Our 3rd grade goal is the same as our governor’s, which is that all children will be on a path to 3rd grade reading by 2020. Once we became a coalition in 2012-2013, we were working together to examine research-based practices that promote literacy development. Then, we recognized that we couldn’t be successful if we didn’t also target the system from birth to three. We then had a coalition meeting in June 2013. At that meeting, we made an effort to target the system, all of the people within the system instead of just teachers. This included policymakers, pediatricians, Department of Public Health, et al. Many great things happened at that meeting, but one of the best things that happened at that meeting was the creation of action teams. The Funding and Policy Action Team included Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald who is the Commissioner of the Department of Public Health in Georgia. She declared at that meeting that the next 100 babies who are diagnosed with hearing loss in Georgia would be on a path to grade level reading. She committed herself to making the changes that were needed to make it happen.

The mission of the 100 babies project is to create an efficient system that ensures that all children will be on a path to grade level reading. At the beginning of the project, the coalition started at the beginning of the literacy process, from pre-birth medical visits to 3rd grade reading, examining all interactions that would promote language growth, which is the foundation for literacy. It was an investigation of all parties that contribute to a child’s birth to literacy plan. It helped the coalition identify gaps and system failures. The gaps were places where issues arose that weren’t owned by any particular agency. The agencies have taken responsibility for their part. We are committed to staying six months ahead of the process. The 100 Babies is a first-run, testing the working system in place in Georgia for babies birth to 3rd grade. The breakdown of the project begins with investigation, then helping agencies problem solve and trouble shoot, and finally filling in the gaps. For each transaction, the focus is twofold. What capacity are we building in parents to empower their children? And how is this step building that child’s language?”

Stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved in this groundbreaking work!

Did you know that babies’ eye contact is linked to language development?

Here are a few things you can do at home to develop eye contact with your baby:

According to Linda Mawhinney and Mary Scott McTeague,

“Sit face to face with your child. Attempt to place your child higher than you. Examples of possible positions: sit your child on your lap; sit in a chair and place your child in a high chair or booster seat; place your child on the couch or chair and sit on the floor in front of him/her.”

“To draw your child’s attention, hold objects near your face to help guide your child without verbalizing. Often words do not have meaning and for other children, a verbal cue could cause him/her to tune you out.”

“Tap your child’s nose and then your own nose. After the child looks, even for a brief second, reward him/her by signing/saying ‘Good looking!'”

“Put your child’s hand on your face to gain attention before giving him/her a direction to follow or a choice.”

“Eliminate or reduce auditory and visual distractions, like the television, radio, etc. This helps your child focus on you.”

“Play ‘funny face’ games in the mirror. Your child can establish eye contact with you in the mirror.”

NPR also did a piece highlighting the link between babies’ eye contact and language development, which you can read or listen to by clicking here. The transcript from the radio show can be found below.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Next, we hear about research that links babies’ early eye contact with their later language development. Reporter Michelle Trudeau tells us that a study appearing in the current issue of Developmental Studies pinpoints how this connection emerges.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU reporting:

Researchers at the University of Washington videotaped babies to try and capture an important transition in infants’ social development. When is it that babies begin to follow the direction of another person’s gaze? Psychologist Rechele Brooks and Andrew Meltzoff studied about a hundred babies, nine-month-olds, 10-month-olds and 11-month-olds. In a quiet room at the university’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, Brooks would sit at a table across from a baby who’d be on Mom’s lap. Down at each end of the table, there was a bright plastic toy.

Ms. RECHELE BROOKS (Researcher, University of Washington): So I would look at the baby. The baby would be looking at me. And once I had established eye contact, that’s when I took that moment to turn to the side.

TRUDEAU: Turning her head to the left or right, looking at one of the toys on the table. When Brooks did this, she sometimes had her eyes open but sometimes she shut her eyes just before she turned her head in the direction of the toy.

Ms. BROOKS: Nine-month-olds were consistently looking at the toy whether my eyes were open or closed. They did not really care. They seemed to be following my head motion rather than whether I can make eye contact with the toy or not.

TRUDEAU: Now bring in the 10-month-olds, same test, very different results.

Ms. BROOKS: Ten-month-olds, they’re going to look at the toy with me much more often when my eyes are open than when my eyes are closed.

TRUDEAU: So just 30 days later and babies will typically start to lock on to your eyes to discover an object. Now Brooks also recorded if the babies made any vocal sounds at the moment they looked at the toy with her. She and the moms were completely quiet. Here again the nine-month-olds didn’t vocalize but the 10- and 11-month-old babies did.

(Soundbite of baby)

Ms. BROOKS: It’s as if the baby goes, `Uh-huh, we’re looking at the same thing,’ and they seem to be making an extra connection.

(Soundbite of baby)

TRUDEAU: And that extra connection pays off later on. These little vocalizations made specifically when looking at the toy with Brooks are linked to later language development.

Ms. BROOKS: When children make that extra connection, when they’re looking at the same toy as the adult but they also go, `Hmm,’ that little extra vocalization, those kids are the ones that end up being more advanced with their language development.

TRUDEAU: Understanding twice as many words at 18 months as the babies who did not make those little sounds eight months earlier. So it’s the two behaviors coupled together at 10 and 11 months, first following a person’s eyes and then vocalizing upon seeing the toy that powerfully predicts later language comprehension. Developmental researcher Peter Mundy from the University of Miami calls this important milestone joint attention.

Mr. PETER MUNDY (Developmental Researcher, University of Miami): Watch how your baby begins to follow your gaze, and when they do follow, pay attention to that and respond to that because that’s a fundamental building block for language and social relatedness. And the more you can encourage it, the more fun you’re going to have with your infant and it may also have a benefit for their early development, as well.

TRUDEAU: Because it indicates, says Mundy, that your baby is beginning to understand your point of view and your intentions, essential early ingredients for a baby in becoming socially aware of other people.

You can learn more about language development in Linda Mawhinney and Mary Scott McTeague’s activity book, Early Language Development, published by Super Duper Publications.

This is what they say about themselves:
“We bring the best research-based strategies to teachers, parents, administrators, librarians, childcare providers, and anyone else involved in helping a young child become a strong, confident reader. Our goal is to bring the reading research to life — to spread the word about reading instruction and to present ‘what works’ in a way that parents and educators can understand and use.”

I just had to share the classroom strategies that I found there. Here’s a peek…

Further down, they list the different categories of strategies with guidance.

This is a gift to all teachers, professionals, parents, and families who actively play a role in a child’s language and literacy development. Many thanks to Reading Rockets for providing educators with this wonderful resource.

In classrooms for children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), written language instruction is part of a rich literacy-learning environment. Written language instruction is not handwriting. It is an expressive version of language just like speaking. Instruction on how to form letters is handwriting. Written language starts with the idea that words have meaning and can be written down.

In Mayer’s (2007) article, “What Really Matters in the Early Literacy Development of Deaf Children,” the author highlights the importance of creating a rich literacy-learning environment and describes a classroom that: includes practices that are relevant, purposeful, and functional for the learner . . . [and] provide daily opportunities to experiment with reading and writing, linking literacy experiences and the active use of language (p. 424).

Here are two activities that teachers can try with students in the classroom or parents can try at home.

Let us know what you think about these activities, whether you found them helpful or if you need help in another area of language/literacy development. You can write to us at gapathway@gmail.com.